Key Largo+Islamorada

So after our blissful night of sleep in the hotel, we took an easy morning exploring with mom while Megan and her family did a scuba dive in Key Largo. Megan was actually less than impressed--it's supposed to be the diving capital of the..U.S.???---but they said they had a storm and so I guess visibility wasn't great. Sad for them. But they still saw some cool things. 

Poor mom was up and ready to go, but we had thought she'd gone with Megan (she told Megan she was the night before when we were awake) but she wasn't. So we had thought...we are on vacation! we will be lazy! haahaa. Luckily, she was ok with us taking forever at the continental breakfast and packing up. We talked about heading straight to the beach, but then decided to show her some of the sights along the keys. 

Our first stop was John Pennekamp State Park on Key Largo, right by where we camped for a week the first year we lived here, and the same place Megan's family were doing their dive. We walked into the visitors center and they have a really big aquarium and mom LOVED learning about all the fish and so that was a lot of fun. Then we attempted a trail but it was closed due to damage, so we just walked around a couple of the beaches.

Molly fell flat on her face the day before at Flamingo. When she stood up she cried a bit, but it looked like two tiny red lines of scratches. When she woke up the next morning it was SOOOOO swollen and horrible looking! Poor girl!

That water. It was such a gorgeous day.

Mangrove trees.

We were only driving from one trailhead to the next. Will was grinning SOOOOOO big the entire time. HAAHA.

Next we stopped at a Key Lime Chocolate store where mom treated us to icecream. It was amazingly delicious. Thanks mom! And we stopped a few more places to take a quick picture. Then we went to Islamorada (a different key) and tried out Robbie's. We had heard that feeding the fish there was pretty fun, so we thought it would be a good thing to do since we haven't done it before. It was SOOOOOO AWESOME!!!! You just walk out on the dock and it's $3 a bucket of fish and start feeding these MASSIVE fish that jump out of the water to grab the fish outta your hand! I loved it!

Molly had no fear, haha. She picked up a fish right off and threw it down to a big tarpon!

Mom, as always, was the hero. She didn't even jump! The rest of us would squeal and jump (every time it is just SOOO unexpected when they decide to jump out for the fish, and they are just soooo big!!!!), even Sterling, but mom was steel.

Several times I would go to feed a fish right in front of me and then one would jump out from under the docks and grab it---you bet I screamed! haaaha

Molly picked the fish up no problem. I told Ruthie she didn't have to. But she wanted to....very, very gingerly. HAHA

I took a thousand photos in fast motion mode to get these! haahaa THOSE TARPON ARE SOOO BIG!

They open their mouth into a perfect circle to get the fish. It's pretty crazy.

I kept thinking...what would happen if my kids fell into the ocean with all those fish?? haaha.

Robbie's had a ton of little stands, so we tried on some hats and mom found some magnets.

About that time Megan called to say they were finished and we headed out to meet up at Sombrero Beach. It was such a good morning!